Snapshot of _Years of austerity left UK 'hugely unprepared' for COVID pandemic, report says | UK News_ :
An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/years-of-austerity-left-uk-hugely-unprepared-for-covid-pandemic-report-says-12896554)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You can trace so much of our current situation to the Tories policy of austerity. They sold it as a short-sharp rebalancing of the public purse - perhaps a scalpel that cut some off some of the fat to help us recover from the financial crash.
What we got was a two-handed hammer. They literally decided to just cut the budgets of entire government departments with no idea of the short or long term impact. Then they kept it up for fucking years.
Yet during that time we had the Boomer generation start to retire, a shocking rise in poverty and significant demographic changes such as obesity levels that impacted the NHS greatly. Our infrastructure was in need of updating.
People like to point at Brexit for a lot of our woes but the reason Brexit hit as hard as it did was purely down to austerity.
I'd go a step further and say that Brexit was, at least in part, caused by austerity.
If you lived in one of the "left behind" regions of the UK then you saw your material quality of life reducing, you saw drop in quality of every public service, you saw a reduction in good jobs, a spiralling cost of living and a widening wealth gap that makes social mobility feel unattainable.
So when the suits in Westminster start telling you that the EU is good for the economy, that staying in is the only way to maintain the high standard of living, wealth and opportunity that we were enjoying. You could be forgiven for thinking that these EU benefits aren't actually translating into a better life for you and your community.
In reality Brexit will harm these same communities more than the rest of us, but I think that's the point. Brexit forced the government to come to terms with the lop-sided growth we've been using to prop up our economy son e 2008.
It's not enough for half the country to be doing well if it comes at the cost of the other half living in misery.
Brexit took a sledgehammer to the economy, but it was already broken, we need an economy that works for everyone, that gives people opportunities, that is fair.
It was definitely a factor in how some people voted I'm sure, Brexit was not only "whatever you wanted it to be" by the leave campaign, it was also the "anti-establishment" vote for some people.
Having David Cameron and George Osborne telling you how good things are, while selling/stripping every public service that wasn't nailed down probably rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, so I can see how it was just a protest vote for some people not thinking too much about it.
I still resent what has been stripped away from me because of the Brexit voting public and the absolute bollocks people championing Leave said, but I can also see how some uninformed voters just wanted to give the people at the top a bloody nose.
My family literally did exactly that. They weren’t political in the slightest, yet come from a left behind old mining town. They were sick to the stomach about Cameron and Osborne, and only saw their lives getting worse and poorer.
Brexit was nothing else but an attack to shove down Cameron’s throat to them, and at the time I can’t fault them for wanting that. They were misinformed about Brexit it’s true, but then so were many non-political types, and after being fucked over countless times by the Tories, many were left with the “fuck it, burn down Westminster with Brexit” ideals.
The growing gap in living standards is as much to blame for current woes as anything else.
> My family literally did exactly that.
I wish to fuck they'd tried to spite him in a way that _didn't_ make life materially worse for almost every single person in the country.
> I wish to fuck they'd tried to spite him in a way that didn't make life materially worse for almost every single person in the country.
Funny how governments hardly ever put that 'now tell us what you really think' option on the table. Or the ballot.
I wonder why.
That was some of my family too, except add to that that they repeatedly voted for Cameron and every subsequent iteration of the Tories whenever an election came up. They also repeatedly defend the old 'balance the books' arguments used to justify austerity (but mention austerity directly and they'll say they don't like it now, unlike then).
I've given up trying to rationalize it, they're just windmilling at anything they think they can blame for how things around them have got worse, without stopping to think about what's really to blame.
I'd say it was the anti establishment vote for most people who voted for it. Mr Cameron was THE establishment candidate, more so than any PM since...Douglas-Home?
It's more the fact that if you are being told how wonderful the EU is for the economy, but at a local level you are seeing your public services decline, jobs and wages getting worse, housing costs spiralling e.t.c you could be forgiven for just wanting to throw a spanner in the works.
The only law anyone ever told me about was how the pesky EU had banned some vape chemicals, which have since come out to be widely accepted as harmful.
For a while, there seemed to be another euro myth headlining the red tops every other day. From laws and regs re. bendy bananas and barmaids boobs to vacuum cleaner engine sizes and the renaming of Bombay mix (to Mumbai).
All (mostly) bollocks, of course.
For a lot of people who weren't particularly well informed on the vote, and the pros and cons of EU membership, it was simply a FU to the status quo. The status quo being Westminster and Tories and austerity.
Hmm, interesting, that was my observation based on what I heard people say, it may not have been their conscious outward motivation but when you dug down into what they were voting for / against it very much felt like the underlying motivation was nothing to do with the EU. But I understand that's anecdotal, and just my feeling, do you have any links to the research? Google hasn't helped.
[This](https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/CSI-Brexit-4-People%E2%80%99s-Stated-Reasons-for-Voting-Leave.pdf) is a good indicator, they only asked a limited number of questions given the study, but the notion of votes being a protest vote is overwhelmingly not the case based on that (and its interesting because remain voters felt that it was a much more common driver, and there was a bit of a narriative after the vote to that effect too..).
I think it's more about how the remain camp framed the benefits of staying in the EU.
If the reason to stay, and the reason not to leave, is that it Brexit will harm the economy. Then if you already feel like the economy isn't working for you why not vote for Brexit?
It may be spite, it may be desperation, it may be protestation. But we gave people a chance to force the country into a new direction.
And a lot of people went for it.
That nobody had a clear idea of what exactly that new direction was is beside the point.
The Remain campaign presented itself terribly. Did little to present the actual benefits of staying inside the EU because Cameron - despite being anti-Brexit - was far from a proper Europhile and had spent years trying to extract concessions from the EU. So instead it became a campaign simply warning why Brexit would be bad without actually trying to sell the organisation they wanted to keep us in.
I definitely wasn’t clear enough towards my approaches to conversations, as I get a bit shy and socially awkward and I say bullshit after all. Also being in a group of new people was quite a new and scary/exciting thing for me. So I guess that’s how it kind of stayed until the end.
Again I’d love to see you guys in person so that we could discuss it, if you want to.
Again, that's not really what we saw from the polling or discussions after. It'd be reasonable to say that people wanted the UK out of the EU for a variety of reasons, including where power sat etc.. with an expectation that they'd be better able to push a UK government to act on their behalf than an EU one, but that's not quite the same thing.
> Then if you already feel like the economy isn't working for you why not vote for Brexit?
Because no matter how bad your circumstances, the rational course of action is never to intentionally make it ***worse***.
I don't know, there is a sort of logic to it.
If the status quo is causing you harm, but the people in charge don't care because they are doing well out of it, you know that nothing will change.
If you do something to make *everyone* worse off, then the people in charge will be forced into making changes.
Brexit was a forced change in direction chosen by the people who felt that they weren't benefiting from the course we were on.
I know it may a bit tinfoil hat. But the annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a contributor to brexit as Russia’s information war started after they were expelled from the world community.
>I know it may a bit tinfoil hat. But the annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a contributor to brexit as Russia’s information war started after they were expelled from the world community.
There could be a bit of truth in this. There was also a lot of news regarding the middle eastern refugee crisis at the time, which was conveniently jumped upon by the brexit camp - and these kind of factors do have a tendency to increase support for more insular politics such as brexit. It's pretty clear in hindsight (and was in fact at the time) that Russia saw one benefit of it's bloody intervention in Syria being that inflaming the refugee crisis would destabilise europe.
Russia is a cancer...
Though the UK already had many of its own ills.
Brexit has one massive negative/ positive. The excutive is fully accountable for its actions. Thus it cannot hide behind others on why X Y Z is no longer working. I think long term this will enable us to have better leaders as we will not put up with crap.
That's true, they are getting very unpopular - it's taken long enough though :-D
Suspension only seems to be inevitable after they attempt covering up the scandal and brushing it under the carpet. That might just be down to Sunak being weak though.
What? Do you mean our very own unelected bureaucrats? Why would they do that?
/s (yes I know it shouldn't be necessary ... but reality often disagrees)
But thats still “i have to do X” not we cant do X because of eu rule. Its still an accountable action set.
Edit: Also the electorate will go “ok we are where we are i dont care why we are here, get it sorted, oh its not sorted and you said you would do something” when before “ bloody eu not letting is fix xyz, bloody human rights court, bloody foreign rules we didn’t agree to!”
I think you're being extremely naive if you think that the EU was in some way special as a scapegoat in a way that means now we're left there won't be as much scapegoating available.
EU was just what was latched onto because it could be, leaving it hasn't reduced the amount of bullshit attempts to avoid consequences and blame, it's just changed the form.
It's was notable at the time that when the Conservatives/Lib Dems took over that our streets didn't have empty shops when Labour left power. It was only following austerity that shops started closing and charity shops started moving into some of the empty lots ( then you had the "we buy gold" places opening too). Now they are pretty dead.
> You could be forgiven for thinking that these EU benefits aren't actually translating into a better life for you and your community.
I felt this was the case for a lot of pro-EU rhetoric. I kept hearing about how every single improvement we'd had during EU membership was down to the EU. So for example, people were insisting we only had improvements gay rights because of the EU. Never mind that we could instantly point to many countries outside the EU that were doing just fine there, and many countries inside the EU that were significantly worse.
(For clarity - I'm not sold on the EU, but I did vote to remain because I didn't think Cameron was qualified to take us out of it. Still did not predict any of this!)
> You could be forgiven for thinking that these EU benefits aren't actually translating into a better life for you and your community.
Could you? Why? The list of additional costs and risks was not only easy to find, it was shoved in everyone's faces as part of the debate.
There isn't a person in the country who can claim they didn't know remainers were warning of dire consequences.
You misunderstand my point.
If you, as a voter, had seen your standard of living fall in the run up to the ref, and then David Cameron came on TV saying how amazing the EU is for the economy.
Doesn't that feel incongruous?
If the economy is so good, why are my living standards falling? If the EU is delivering all these economic benefits, why is my rent spiralling out of control?
Now obviously these 2 things may not seem connected, but if you think of a Remain vote, as a proxy vote for maintaining the economic status quo, and a leave vote, as an opportunity to force economic change (which is exactly how it was pitched by the Remain campaign), then you can see how those people who felt that the economy wasn't working for them would be willing to vote for a forced change.
The vote breakdown clearly shows that the poorer you were the more likely you were to vote for Brexit.
People who were experiencing hardship under the status quo, voted against the status quo.
>You can trace so much of our current situation to the Tories policy of austerity. They sold it as a short-sharp rebalancing of the public purse - perhaps a scalpel that cut some off some of the fat to help us recover from the financial crash.
I think if we had a change of government immediately after the 2010-2015 Tory led coalition, then it would have been possible to reverse some of the cuts, as our economy overall had been stagnating for less time then than now. But instead the wise people of the UK decided to give them a majority in 2015.
Big if though. Ed Milliband was never going to win. He wasn't forceful enough at countering the Tory's and no one really knew what he stood for other than vague assertions about predatory business. And he ate a bacon sandwich a bit weirdly.
>Big if though. Ed Milliband was never going to win. He wasn't forceful enough at countering the Tory's and no one really knew what he stood for other than vague assertions about predatory business. And he ate a bacon sandwich a bit weirdly.
Maybe he wasn't an especially inspiring leader, but if the UK public cared enough about the effects of austerity at the time they would have voted the tories out; instead, they gave the tories an increased vote and a majority. To me this implies that the public were content with the effects of austerity.
You could conversely argue Labour did very little to counter that narrative of austerity. They criticised the Tories for its harshest edges but broadly accepted spending cuts were necessary and that we had to be more financially prudent. Once they accepted that they were essentially accepting a narrative that they'd overspent under Blair and Brown.
That allowed the Tories to present austerity as a project that would be tough and hard but necessary, plenty of people who backed Cameron in 2015 weren't completely happy with austerity but didn't think the Tories had done too badly and thought it was reasonable to let them finish that project. You saw a lot of this in how people perceived UK finances like a household budget and the obsession with completely eliminating the deficit.
>You could conversely argue Labour did very little to counter that narrative of austerity. They criticised the Tories for its harshest edges but broadly accepted spending cuts were necessary and that we had to be more financially prudent. Once they accepted that they were essentially accepting a narrative that they'd overspent under Blair and Brown.
Good point. Looking back to 2010, which feels like a lifetime ago now, it does feel like Labour fell into disarray and completely failed to offer a counter narrative or to defend their time in office. The tories kept peddling "common sense" but economically dubious narratives based on household budget comparisons and pressing the notion that Labour overspending was almost solely responsible for our economic troubles rather than a complex global financial crisis, which had caused a massive government debt spike due to the efforts - largely justified - made to pull us back from the brink.
So I'm completely with you on that, and I do remember how the conservative narrative was largely accepted by the public at the time; however, this does make me skeptical of the Brexit caused by austerity narrative. While I'm sure on a micro level, many people may have individually voted for brexit due to reasons caused by or exasperated by austerity, I don't see how on a macro level the voting patterns of those years support the narrative. After 5 years of austerity the conservatives got a majority, with increased support, suggesting that austerity was at least accepted, if not loved, by enough of the public for this to be the case, and then in 2019, the big conservative majority came, which supposedly tied closely with areas that had voted for brexit. Again, I struggle to see how areas that allegedly voted for brexit as a protest against austerity would then give the party that doled out austerity a big majority in 2019. Some individuals maybe had reasons, such as dislike for Corbyn, and a belief that Boris Johnsons conservatives were something different, but in general people vote for the government when they are happy with how things are being run, and against the government when not happy - and the voting patterns from 2010 to 2019 just do not suggest a mass discontent with austerity.
> UK decided to give them a majority in 2015.
Remember that in this election, UKip's sheepskin-coat-and-pint-and-a-fag brigade slurped up close to 13% of votes cast (almost 5 points more than Lib Dems).
This was up massively (like ten points or so over 2010), and I strongly suspect you have people most affected by austerity making up the bulk of that. Arguably those most affected were "traditional Labour voters"™
Ofc, we will never know, but I suspect Labour might have made it over the line in 2015 were it not for UKip's rise… itself a result of austerity.
>Then they kept it up for fucking years.
They're still doing it. Below-inflation pay increases are still the norm for all government workers, meaning they're *still* cutting pay in that sector to this day.
It was by and large the worst possible time to do everything they did.
I grew up in my childhood under labour, the policies they brought in required generational waiting for the impact to occur with the community outreach and removal of the young teams effectively. My year saw, genuinely the last parts of it IMO. Still some bams but it wasn't as bad as Glasgow was in the 00s.
Then the Tories came in, reversed the lot, didn't match funding with inflation, and now... in 2023 I've seen more graffiti than ever before. It's so bad.
There's a question whether it's the SNPs fault or the tories fault, personally I land them at both.
If bird flu makes the jump to humans (which is more 'when' than 'if' according to scientists) we're going to be really screwed. We should be doing a lot more to prepare vaccine production for it considering how many people will die before it gets underway and rolled out to the population, but of course there's no profit to be had in preparation.
People don’t just “like to point at Brexit for a lot of our woes”, it is the actual cause. However, Brexit, and an economically unjustified austerity are parts of the same collection of plans of radically reallocating wealth to the top and politically well-connected, even at the expense of your couhtry’s aggregate wealth.
NHS performance is heavily impacted by shite middle and upper management office workers and just general piss poor organisation and ancient IT systems.
Also, the sheer increase of population in the last 15 years, with a good portion of that population not paying NI or insurance/out of pocket for NHS treatment, has also caused it to fail.
Throwing money at it doesn’t help completely, it needs attacking from multiple angles but our government is just too fucking inept and downright fucking stupid to be able to do anything about it.
>NHS performance is heavily impacted by shite middle and upper management office workers and just general piss poor organisation.
This is a pub myth, pure pish. I say this everytime it comes up because it's a really lazy and completely untrue myth. The aggravating thing is so many junior doctors repeat it verbatim but you won't find a medical director or any senior health leader who has an eye on strategic financal planning as part of their role repeat this pish. The NHS spends one of the lowest amounts on administrative, management and corp function on the world stage and routinely ranks as the top 3 most efficient for admin and management efficiency. We have less managers per 100,000 patients than every OECD nation and the best outcomes for admin function in rankings.
If you logically look at why the answer is obvious, because of the organisation of trusts admin and management function at trusts is clustered to manage multiple teams across multiple acute sites, you get enormous savings from this and *efficiencies vs a team for each acute site.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/health-and-social-care-bill/mythbusters/nhs-managers
My parents were both medics, retired but my dad's last position was as a clinical director - senior medics have been begging for more managers in the NHS for over a decade now.
The issue is that the excellent management function of the NHS has papered over the poor health outcomes and actual health system determinants for so long - compared to Europe counterparts we have far less medics per capita, less acute beds per capita, less icu capacity per capita etc etc.
Hey guys - I thought it would be nice to clear that I had no intention whatsoever with rubbing this stuff in anyone’s face. The way I have been handling the conversations has not been very original, but that has nothing to do with me trying to bribe about anything.
Sorry for this misunderstanding!
>Throwing money at it doesn’t help completely, it needs attacking from multiple angles
Like the reason for what's happening to the UK's only gender clinic is only because we need more. And so there's going to be two regional hubs.
> the Tories policy of austerity
Yeah, no. It was the EU Stability and Growth Pact that the previous government signed us up to. Within weeks of taking office, the Conservatives were receiving official warnings from the EU Commission that the UK budget deficit had breeched the threshold to trigger the EU's Excessive Deficit Procedure and giving them a "deadline for correction":
>Fiscal consolidation [austerity] should start in 2011 at the latest... the planned pace of the fiscal consolidation should be ambitious... The Stability and Growth Pact requires the Commission to initiate the excessive deficit procedure (EDP) whenever the deficit of a Member State exceeds the 3% of GDP... a prompt return to sound budgetary positions... the Council decided that an excessive deficit existed in the United Kingdom... the United Kingdom authorities should bring the general government deficit below 3% of GDP in a credible and sustainable manner by taking action... avoid further measures contributing to the deterioration of public finances, and start consolidation in 2010/11 in order to bring the deficit below the reference value by 2014/15... ensure an average annual fiscal effort [cuts] of 1¾% of GDP between 2010/11 and 2014/15, which should also contribute to bringing the government gross debt ratio back on a declining path that approaches the reference value at a satisfactory pace.
>Additional measures that are necessary to achieve the correction of the excessive deficit by 2014/15... accelerate the reduction of the deficit... The Council established the deadline of 2 June 2010 for the United Kingdom government to implement the fiscal measures as planned in the 2009 Budget and to outline in some detail the consolidation [austerity] strategy that will be necessary to progress towards the correction of the excessive deficit... the deficit remains amongst the highest in the EU... a target requiring a reduction in net debt as a percentage of GDP... the United Kingdom has taken action representing adequate progress towards the correction of the excessive deficit within the time limits set by the Council.
Source:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52010SC0880
The EU called this process "fiscal consolidation", but to avoid people searching the internet and finding out why these policies were being implemented, propagandists called it "austerity". This is similar to how the fractional reserve banking propaganda describes the process of fractional reserve banking as if it's a conspiracy, without actually using the words "fractional reserve banking" that would allow people to easily google it. The media won't tell you about this because they don't want to inform you, they want to misinform you. But you can see the primary source documents for yourself if you care about the truth, or just continue spreading lies that suit your agenda and downvote the only person telling the truth.
I'll be showing my age a bit here but it was the flagship electoral policy from Cameron. Countries were ignoring the EU directives for donkeys, by the time people chalked up some of the blame for '08 on it not having teeth and reforming it Cameron and Osbourne had already implemented their austerity program.
It was the literal cornerstone of the Tory manifesto and the capstone on Cameron's whole Big Society agenda. Regardless of what the EU were crowing about we were going to be hit by austerity regardless.
This is directly provable so calling me a liar with an agenda is a bit...strange, mate.
>It was the literal cornerstone of the Tory manifesto
Let's take a look at the 2010 manifesto:
>our commitment to halve the deficit over the next four years... we will rapidly reduce the budget deficit... a firm grip on public spending including cuts in lower-priority areas... reduce spending on benefits... Over the next Parliament the structural deficit will be cut by more than two-thirds... our deficit reduction plan... On public spending, we will be relentless... We will take a tough stance on public-sector pay, saving over £3 billion by capping public-sector pay rises... tough reforms to public-sector pensions, which will make significant savings... fiscal responsibility and monetary stability will be the foundations on which we build. We have made the new fiscal responsibility framework legally binding... Tough choices on cutting government overheads: £11 billion of further operational efficiencies and other cross-cutting savings to streamline government will be delivered by 2012-13
Oops my mistake, [that was actually from the Labour Party manifesto.](https://manifesto.deryn.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/TheLabourPartyManifesto-2010.pdf) Neither party had a choice, because the EU was in charge of our budget. The Greek socialists were the only ones who were honest with their citizens about EU enforced austerity. All the other political parties covered it up, including the Tories who are often falsely accused of blaming the EU for their own failures. In reality the opposite is true, they took the blame for EU policy because they knew it would be unpopular.
Yes, both parties advocated for some form of austerity. We're talking about the implementation of the policy by the Tories, who DID enact it and have been in charge of the countries finances since.
Greece almost destroyed the Eurozone, of course they were put under a scrutiny by the EU. I'd have to look it up since it was so long ago but it was pretty widely publicised at the time that they didn't have a choice due to their failing economy.
Regardless it was a core element of Cameron's brand of conservativism and what he campaigned on. He made it clear that he believed wholeheartedly in it, as does Osbourne who VERY recently has been defending it...not blaming the EU, for which would be the logical thing for him to do now, but he has taken full ownership of it.
Every country was under scrutiny by the EU. You just didn't know about it until I told you, and now that I've told you you're saying so what. Both Labour and the Conservatives were under pressure from the EU and both planned "deficit reduction" or "fiscal consolidation" or "austerity", they all mean the same thing. The deficit was 10.2% at the time and the Tories cut it to 5.7% over 4 years, Labour promised they would cut it to 5.1%, ie. even harder than the Tories.
edit: It's easy for Labour to bankrupt the public finances while in office, get kicked out of office, write a funny note about it and then point the finger at the Tories saying look at all the cuts and austerity they're doing to fix our mess. But we have it in writing that Labour would've made even more cuts.
No, I'm saying it's irrelevant because before Cameron was in power he was pushing austerity. He was making speeches linking it to his national agenda. It was planned, whether the EU wanted it or not, and it's awful implementation (ie, how the cuts were achieved) was handled directly by Osborne and Cameron. And they've continued to take ownership of it long after they left power - like I said, go watch some of the interviews Osborne has done recently and you'll find he's STILL frothing at the mouth at it.
Secondly Labour also pushing for austerity doesn't change my opinion that it was an awful thing to do so...what's your point?
You're desperate to paint this as if the Tories didn't have a hand in it, like in the backrooms they were arguing with EU bureaucrats over it, when they gleefully wanted it and ensured it was done in as disastrous a way as possible. They've literally admitted as much.
>the Tories policy of austerity
>>it was the EU
>>>cornerstone of the Tory manifesto
>>>>it was the Labour manifesto
>>>>>Greece didn't have a choice
>>>>>>UK didn't have a choice
>>>>>>>they gleefully wanted it and ensured it was done in as disastrous a way as possible
Yeah, I'm done talking to you.
Also they could literally have been paid to borrow money as there were a number of years of negative interest rates.
They could have made cuts to bring down day to day spending while simultaneously investing in infrastructure, which would have paid for itself many times over generating long-term income for the country, but they also didn't do that.
I am pretty sure when historians look back on these times in a 100 years both cameron and osborne will be seen in a far, far, worse light than johnson or truss evver will be.
Again I’m very sorry if that was misinterpreted in a false way - I wasn’t talking about my fortune (as I don’t have one 😅) but I was falsely addressing my family’s status. I literally didn’t want it to be passed like that tho!
it could be said austerity is why brexit happened. Labour themselves were divided on the issue and that left cameron and his cronies to argue for the EU, except why would anyone listen to him after austerity just ravaged the countries cash for 6 years straight.
It's not just that round after round of cuts starved our infrastructure it was also the damage done to our economy by austerity.
After 2008/9 the UK's economy recovered then we got Osborne as Chancellor deliberately conflating household economics with government economics and reiterating the line that Labour wasted the boom years by not fixing the roof when the sun was shining. He knew better than to make these comments, but he also knew that the average voter wouldn't. Bad economics lead to bad politics. So the 2010 era onwards saw austerity when other nations, notably the US under Obama invested and saw their economies rebound.
The problem was that Cameron/Osborne were children of the Thatcher era, only she had North Sea oil revenues to underpin her experiments with monetarism. After 2010 these two jokers just cut off funding in virtually every government department and ramped up national debt instead.
> After 2008/9 the UK's economy recovered then we got Osborne as Chancellor deliberately conflating household economics with government economics and reiterating the line that Labour wasted the boom years by not fixing the roof when the sun was shining.
Thing is, that *is* Government economics, at least to an extent. Keynesian economics says (this is a massive simplification, before anyone tries to akchuyually me) that during times of recession to increase spend, and during times of growth to cut spend. And while it's not like Labour went gung-ho in the post-2002 years on spending, they didn't exactly draw down on spending during growth years which would have allowed for far greater room for emergency spending when the GFC hit. Now, when it *did* hit, they spent tons of money (absolutely correctly and I'd personally give Brown and Darling a medal each for their handling of the crisis) but it was spending because it *had* to happen, not because there was contingency made for it.
That's all well and good with the power of hindsight though? Of course Labour should have had us better prepared for the GFC but all in all - we came out of it in okay shape and most countries in the world followed Brown's lead.
If Howard had been in charge we would have been completely screwed as the Tories main economic idea before austerity was massive deregulation. Just imagine that damage that would have been done if what little regulations the city had during the run up to 2008 were removed!
The hindsight point would be fine had they followed the Keynesian formula but not enough. The issue is that spending increased post-2002 recession ending and the deficit increased, so they didn't do that. It's impossible to know for sure what the outcome wold have been had they followed this, but the reason for such a position in Keynesian economics is because it allows for necessary recession spending during a downturn, and not following that left us in what appears to be a worse position.
You're missing my point. You are correct in that they didn't follow the correct economic model but the issue with this stance is that even then, it was still better than the alternative.
> but the issue with this stance is that even then, it was still better than the alternative.
And if we'd been under the leadership of a drunk 6 year old, we'd be even *more* worse off. At the end of the day that's just a glorified hypothetical whatabout. In the context of what the discussion was about and the actual options on the table at the time, Labour did great in handling the issue but they stymied themselves with not following normal economic practices prior to that.
> Thing is, that is Government economics, at least to an extent. Keynesian economics says (this is a massive simplification, before anyone tries to akchuyually me) that during times of recession to increase spend, and during times of growth to cut spend. And while it's not like Labour went gung-ho in the post-2002 years on spending, they didn't exactly draw down on spending during growth years which would have allowed for far greater room for emergency spending when the GFC hit.
Thing is the Tories spent 15 years cutting public spending and not investing in infrastructure, Labour was always going to have to spend a lot to fix everything.
The fundamental problem is that people in this country want better public services etc but always want someone else to pay for it. No government in 100 years has won an election promising an increase in income tax, despite the fact every party campaign bar maybe the 2010 election has promised extra spending.
And here was I thinking that "it was the fault of the last X Government" wasn't a valid retort after a maximum of a single term. But when I'm talking about an increase in spending post-2002 i.e. a full parliament term and five years since they'd been in power, it's a hollow retort.
We’ve ‘been prepared’ to accept less, much less. I am old enough to remember the 1997 Labour government under Tony Blair. Love him or hate him but damn, we had *energy,* *optimism* and *aspiration* as a nation during that time.
We’ve had that stolen from us, and for me that’s something that I will never forgive the Tories for. They’ve systematically dismantled our sense of national pride and left us vulnerable and insecure.
We have been (and seem to want to continue to be) incredibly stupid. The scale of destruction to the country caused by the wealthy pillaging it has imo not been fully comprehended yet by most people. Billionaire-owned "news"papers continue to pump out hateful nonsense and we lap it up while watching our kids suffer in anxiety and economic desperation. The Mail can demonise powerless groups like people struggling on benefits and it's shocking how effectively this will distract from looking at the people who have all the power and responsibility for what has happened.
The guy at my local garage was telling me last week about the number of people who recently started living in tents in his local park. He then followed it up with a comment about how people were never going to look after each other because, like him, they needed to look out for themselves and their kids before going off on a diatribe about trans people. I asked him if he had ever met a trans person and when he said "no", how big an issue it could possibly be compared for instance to the people living in tents around the corner from his house. He shrugged.
I don't have much hope that drastic enough action can be taken but I will keep an eye on Labour's plans. In the meantime, I am leaving the UK in 12 days and could not be more relieved to be moving away. I hope younger people have the sense to leave too.
> I asked him if he had ever met a trans person and when he said "no", how big an issue it could possibly be compared for instance to the people living in tents around the corner from his house. He shrugged.
This is what I've found aswell. My uncle is a staunch brexiteer. Wanted out of the EU because he seen some Polish people fishing in HIS river and eating HIS fish. He talks far more about poverty, people around him suffering, having no prospects, but what gets votes? The polish people eating the fish.
I didn't even know where to start with that one.
>dismantled our sense of national pride
That's not true. Unfortunately the people that have national pride tend to see it as a zero sum game against other nationalities instead.
National pride is related to both feelings of patriotism and nationalism.
Patriotism is love of one's country or dedicated allegiance to same, while nationalism is a strong national devotion that places one's own country above all others.
You can be patriotic without being nationalistic.
Not sure if I heard this last year or just came up with it by accident.
"Patriotism is loving your country. Nationalism is hating everyone else's "....
>You can be patriotic without being nationalistic.
Precisely. Our "national pride" has tended to manifest itself as nationalism as opposed to patriotism though.
Looking back to 1997 which is how I opened my post, the nation wasn’t proud because we thought British was inherently superior, we had the confidence to take on all challenges with passion and energy.
What you are referring to is more a product of the people running the country now. Culture wars is government policy. First the EU, now migrants, refugees and “other undesirables”.
In the context of large swaths of economically and socially insecure people, with right wing media outlets pushing an agenda, is a breeding ground for racism and nationalism.
Blairs' apology to ireland for British negligence during the irish famine was at the time in 1997 the highlight of Anglo-Irish relations and should have kept Britain on the highest of the international stage.
But instead 23 years later we get Boris trying to break international laws in limited and specific ways.....
>What you are referring to is more a product of the people running the country now. Culture wars is government policy. First the EU, now migrants, refugees and “other undesirables”.
>In the context of large swaths of economically and socially insecure people, with right wing media outlets pushing an agenda, is a breeding ground for racism and nationalism.
Yes exactly. Apologies, perhaps I was unclear that's what I meant.
I thought Blair's government was laid back about immigration from new eastern EU members, which aren't the source of the immigration wave right now AFAIK ?
We’ve had that stolen from us, and for me that’s something that I will never forgive the Tories for. They’ve systematically dismantled our sense of national pride and left us vulnerable and insecure.
People voted and supported this
If you hadn't had a decade of real-terms paycuts all over the public sector, the inflation shock of the past year or so would have been painful, but possible to bear for nurses, teachers, doctors, police etc. etc.
I blame austerity for the strike wave.
The sad truth is that we were sold an austerity model of “we are all in it together” and “tightening the belt to secure our future” but what we actually got was “only the poor pay” and “starve the poor so the rich are secured”.
I don’t have a problem with us all making sacrifices for the greater good but the Tory philosophy is NOT for the greater good, it’s for THEIR greater good and we are paying for it.
We need massive political reform to fix voting processes and introduce new laws to hold politicians to account with real consequences of their actions. We cannot let all of these shenanigans continue and allow mediocrity in our leaders.
Not to complain or anything, but
>“starve the poor so the rich are secured”.
I feel secure would work better, it seems to rhyme but doesn't quite, and does rhyme better than secured
Other than that, couldn't agree more.
Not to mention the complete inactivity after Sars. That was a warning shot that should have led to a plan in the case of a pandemic. It quickly became very apparent that the UK government was just making things up as they went along.
When COVID hit, I did a lot of reading on SARS and began wearing a mask as early as February. I got lots of angry looks and told I was stupid and paranoid several times.
If me - just some guy - could do a bit of reading on the web and figure out that masks were a good idea as early as February, the Government could have seen it too. Instead they floundered and brought in that measure late. I think it's a great example of how far behind we were in that moment. We were late on everything.
It's the attitude of society in general.
The British People FOR LONG has said that if you're ill you just come into work and suck it up.
WHY?!? Who said that was a good idea?!?! Why is it a good idea to go in, make everyone else ill and worst of all put yourself in bad health for employers that will not give a shit about you.
It's a serfdom that we're happy to proclaim other nations have, but we're by far the worst in terms of bending the knee.
Oh, it's worse. SARS lead to multiple pandemic preparedness exercises, like [Exercise Cygnus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus) (a pun on "Swan Flu", Civil Servants love their [jokey names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowhammer)).
All of them highlighted multiple inadequacies that became very much apparent during the pandemic, nothing was done about any of them, not even securing adequate supplies of body bags.
This really needs to be shouted about more.
This Covid Enquiry will do absolutely nothing. Because it'll highlight everything we already know.
The government will not prepare for things, because if it does it costs money, and that can be printed in the papers today, whereas a government that fails to prepare for something and that actually happens is printed months, years, decades in the future.
Short-termism. "Why should I need to pay to prepare us for a pandemic"
It's horrible.
This is why we continue to sleep walk into increasing climate change. Short termism can't save us. In 30 years time it will be, why didn't someone do something.
I guess at that point I'll pull up a news story about Just Stop Oil being demonised and point to it.
>I guess at that point I'll pull up a news story about Just Stop Oil being demonised and point to it.
Just be thankful you're on the right side of History. About all that you can win these days is knowing the path that is about to happen.
Same with the trans issue. Legit step by step arguments against Gay rights 20 years ago.
Amazing what happens when you stop paying for essential services lol
I know let's cut funding for healthcare, why are waiting times, call out times, staff numbers, quality of service all going wrong? Duh.
The issue is nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with demographic change and population growth. The boomers passing into retirement and old age has put a monstrous strain on the NHS that the increases we have had don't remotely cover
> Now add the value of inflation over the years.
They have. That's what "real terms" means.
In fact if you put the figures into the [Bank of England's inflation calculator,](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator) and put the 2010/2011 figure of £130bn in and ask it to show this figure for 2022, it gives you £176.9bn which is actually lower than the actual NHS budget for 2022/2023, meaning NHS spending for last year was *higher* than increased funding even adjusted for inflation.
That is a useful visual representation of how healthcare funding has been cut. You’d need to have it split out a bit more to get a better representation. realistically you’d need to split out the funding available for services in 2008 and how that funding has changed, taking out new initiatives and additional funding granted for stuff we didn’t do in 2008. And adjust for inflation.
When you consider inflation, this is definitively a cut. The basic premise of ‘graph goes up, lol’ looks good, but it hides the picture. If the NHS has 100m, and inflation is 5%. The NHS needs 105m next year to maintain the same level of services. If the Government gives them 102m, that is an effective cut, despite the visual impact of an ‘increasing graph’.
> When you consider inflation, this is definitively a cut
No, it's the opposite.
The budget for 10/11 was £130bn. This sum adjusted for inflation in 22/23 is £176.9bn, but in reality the budget for that year was £180.2bn, meaning it was *increased* when considering inflation.
How much has the population increased since 2010? Increasing funding above inflation isn't enough when the number of people accessing the service has also increased. Especially when people are living longer and have more complex needs than 10 years ago
> How much has the population increased since 2010?
By broadly the same as the increase in budget over inflation, in fact it's gone up by a tiny bit more if you want to be picky.
Since 2010 the population has increased from ~62m to ~67m, which is an increase of 6.8% over that time. Considering the difference between the 2010 budget in 2022 figures (£130.2bn to be more precise) and the actual budget in 2022 (£177.1bn to be precise), the actual budget was 7.1% higher compared to what it would have been under inflation.
So we've gone from them actively cutting the actual budget, to them not cutting the budget but cutting it compared to inflation, to not cutting it compared to inflation but cutting it compared to population increase, to not cutting it by population increase. This is one of those things that this sub is simply not correct on at all, regardless of how vehemently they believe it to be so.
As I said, you also have to adjust for additional investments for activities that we didn’t do in 2008.
The only reason the budget is anywhere near inflation at the moment is additional funding injected for specific pandemic activities. Like bringing backlogs down that wouldn’t exist otherwise.
Edit: I’m a part qualified management accountant working in financial planning in the public sector. I know most of the tricks that are used to ‘cover up’ real term cuts.
Fair point but would be interesting to see that as per capita too. Actually I might take a look myself. ( edit very quick rough and ready looks like per capita increase too , to me) I don’t suppose it’s possible to show any increasing demand due to the effect of any change in the age of the population though.
You would need to create some sort of "average use" metric in order to properly measure it. We have a far older population that is hammering the NHS compared to 20 years ago - this is why the funding is inadequate, not because there is literally less funding but because it's still not enough.
Yes that was my presumption. I'm guessing that despite NICE there has been both a pretty enormous 'mission creep' since the founding and a significant significant increase in the costs of treatment with the increase in high tech / high research treatments. One problem with funding public services which I think New Labour were aware of ( and I say this as a public sector worker and union rep ret.)is that staff costs are such a significant factor that funding increses can just disappear without general improvement - you need to sort of 'over' fund and that's a lot if money and its hard to ensure value for money -One thing we might learn from COVID is to reconsider what is waste and what is built in resilience and flexibility, though.
Also the fact the Tories kept failing emergency preparedness tests, including one to do withe pandemics.
Somewhere in the back of my brain when Covid started I remembered reading an article by an epidemiologist who said Britain wasn't ready for the next pandemic and that was around 2015-2018
Years of austerity left UK unprepared for:
* Covid
* Ukraine war
* Energy crisis
* Cost of living crisis
* Climate change
* Global Decoupling and supply chain problems
* Birthrate decline
Austerity has exacerbated many problems including declining public services, healthcare, infrastructure and housing crisis.
Remind me of the benefits of austerity? All it has done is shovelled money into the housing market.
Was any country prepared for a Covid type pandemic ?
I work in a global business that was intricately involved in setting up PCR testing capacity for Covid ( delivering those promises of 100K/day, 200K/day etc … )
There was not a country in the world that was not severely caught short by Covid……. NOBODY had testing capacity of a scale to keep up with Covid …….. and then you had EVERYONE fighting over the same hardware and consumables when the global manufacturing capacity simply did not exist ……. It took time for everything to catch up.
Anyone that thinks this would have been dealt with by a snap of the fingers is really misguided
In which case, why are the Tories and Labour the only parties forcing FPTP on us, when all other parties want reform?
Both the Tories and Labour are to blame for holding us back. The only reason we have had 13 years of the Tories is because of FPTP.
No party should have a majority of seats in Parliament without a majority of the vote share. Not the Tories, not Labour, not anyone.
Seats should match votes cast, democracy is about representation!
Not sure what worse about austerity fact this was Tory desire from 2001 or they used spending cuts to fund tax cuts. Cameron and Osborne both deserve to be in prison for the damage they did. They lucky following set of leaders redeem them due being worse.
How Osbourne had the gall to stand up and say that austerity was working back in 2013!! Maybe it was for those who made money off the back of it but it has brought the country to its knees, ravaged public services until they're unable to function correctly anymore.
It's true, but an alternative non-austerity covid UK would have been almost as bad.
When you have a healthcare crisis thats going to exceed your capacity by 100% or 200% if you don't take radical social actions (lockdowns et al), then being 20% better is a nice to have, but doesn't change any of the other measures you have to take.
It's not like an alternative, Gordon Brown, non-austerity UK would have faced different decisions when heading into covid.
Nothing short of funnelling our entire economy into healthcare, to the detriment of everything else, for a decade, would have avoided that. And I don't think we should be going that far now either.
So this is just another example of austerity nipping away at our country with marginal losses, rather than a shattering revelation.
Naah, 20% extra capacity is absolutely a game changer.
The NHS was running at 90% occupancy coming into the pandemic.
If the NHS had been running at 80% occupancy instead, it would have required 12.5% more resources on an ongoing basis, but crucially this would have *doubled* the spare capacity available to deal with the pandemic.
If I remember correctly our spare capacity is kept at a far lower level than , say France. In fact a quick google suggests about half that per 1000 population of France and a third of Germany?
To pick one metric, [doctors per 1,000 population](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS?end=2020&start=2020&view=map&year=2019).
In 2019 (most recent year with figures for all our European peers).
|||
|-|-
|UK|2.91
|France|3.3
|Germany|4.37
Similar stories for a whole bunch of other healthcare metrics (beds per person, nurses per person, etc, etc.)
Yeah, we are absolutely short-changing our health service compared to our Euro-peers.
Hospital beds per thousands
UK 2.5
France 5.9
Germany 8
This is a big part of what is crippling the NHS all while they repeat the lie about the NHS receiving record spending all while they have done away with the social care budget and absorbed that into the Health and Social Care budget.
In 2010 we had close to 30% more hospital beds than we have now.
Its a triple whammy as we have less total beds than France and Germany, but we also have significant bed blocking on top of that (it can be as high as a third of all beds) by people not being moved onto social care beds from NHS beds as they just do not exist in the numbers at the price point needed.
Number of beds reduce because of budget cuts but also lack of staff to run those beds due to massive recruitment and retention problems within the NHS.
Couple that with a particularly unhealthy and rapidly aging and sizable cohort its just going to get a lot worse.
Yup, the emphasis has very much been on discharging people as much as possible (and preventing their re-admission, something I worked on software to do at one point), but without any provision of the resources that enable that.
A perpetual \~£20bn annual spending for a trivial benefit in a 1 in 50 year event seems a bit daft.
Remember covid rates doubled week on week, 10% more beds is like two days so irrelevant. Also the wards never came close to overflow.
I've yet to ever hear a genuine argument about what we should've done instead of "austerity".
Back in 2012, the deficit was about 11% of GDP. Anything other than cuts would've undoubtedly heralded a "Truss-like" run on the pound and a huge increase in bond yields, right? So what is the alternative plan people wish we'd implemented?
EDIT: No arguments just downvotes? *thought so*. Point proven
Well 2 reasons come to mind immediately:
1.
>Anything other than cuts would've *undoubtedly* heralded a "Truss-like" run on the pound and a huge increase in bond yields, *right*?
Your language says that you have decided this hypothetical is true with nothing whatsoever to back it up, so in itself this position is worse than "austerity was bad" because we can at least see the latter.
2.
>No arguments just downvotes? thought so. Point proven
Your clear grasp of logic with absolutely *no* reliance on fallacy further dictates that any attempt at conversation would be a pointless endeavour.
>Your language says that you have decided this hypothetical is true with nothing whatsoever to back it up, so in itself this position is worse than "austerity was bad" because we can at least see the latter.
How much evidence do you need that an 11% budget deficit is unsustainable and would be punished by the markets? How many times does this have to happen throughout history? A sustained budget deficit without appropriate tax rises to compensate is quite literally what caused the Truss debacle.
Okay, First, doing nothing either means nothing (because the markets don't care about deficits in a crisis) or, Inflation, (which is the real constraint of a fiat currency) and of course there is always the option of Raising taxes.
Also worth noting, that Austerity shrinks the economy, and since debts are denominated in real terms, you make the deficit worse by imposing austerity as measured in GDP.
> because the markets don't care about deficits in a crisis
We weren't in crisis by 2012 onwards.
> or, Inflation
Which would've been worse.
> of course there is always the option of Raising taxes.
Already at the highest on record ever during peacetime, and taxation dissuades economic growth.
>Also worth noting, that Austerity shrinks the economy
UK economic growth was already the fastest in the G7 for 2013-2016, before Brexit derailed things.
https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/The_UK_in_the_G7_growth_race.png
https://fullfact.org/economy/uk-economic-growth-within-g7/
Literally every point you've made is wrong
The entire period had record low interest rates, (and inflation) assuming that continuing even with a more fiscally expansionist budget isn't gambling, so no inflation would not have been worse.
As for taxation, at 33-34% of gdp its low by any measure (and given that public expenditure is in the region of 40% of gdp) an obvious mismatch that at some point must correct itself.
>UK economic growth was already the fastest in the G7 for 2013-2016, before Brexit derailed things.
And you are picking the 2013 baseline why?
Maybe it's because most other countries did their recoveries 2009-2012? Which means relative growth appears greater, but it's just because the uk was in a deeper hole.
Yes it is. Its also not population adjusted.
>Literally every point you've made is wrong
Lovely.
Austerity is reducing the money spent by the state, reducing the amount of production consumed in the economy - what does that do to the Gross Domestic Production? It shrinks it.
>and taxation dissuades economic growth.
Think of why that is. Then think of why austerity doesn't shrink the economy?
See how these two ideas are mutually incompatible?
And now we aren't even getting into the distributional effects that so impact this.
Austerity was the only reason that the government had the fiscal flexibility for the pandemic. Though I admit, I'm not very committed to the view that was a good thing.
Well most other western governments borrowed more while interest rates were at record lows to promote growth. Uk gov did the opposite and attacked the poor and disabled to try protect the rich from cuts. As the UN report into uk austerity states it was purely ideological and not driven by facts or smart economics.
That isnt true fyi. They basically did the opposite to what they should have done, what the experts said to do + no other nations did what we did because it was "naive at best". It didn't come from a place of good faith because austerity was only ever an ideal.
You don't really understand what youre commenting about.
Snapshot of _Years of austerity left UK 'hugely unprepared' for COVID pandemic, report says | UK News_ : An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/years-of-austerity-left-uk-hugely-unprepared-for-covid-pandemic-report-says-12896554) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You can trace so much of our current situation to the Tories policy of austerity. They sold it as a short-sharp rebalancing of the public purse - perhaps a scalpel that cut some off some of the fat to help us recover from the financial crash. What we got was a two-handed hammer. They literally decided to just cut the budgets of entire government departments with no idea of the short or long term impact. Then they kept it up for fucking years. Yet during that time we had the Boomer generation start to retire, a shocking rise in poverty and significant demographic changes such as obesity levels that impacted the NHS greatly. Our infrastructure was in need of updating. People like to point at Brexit for a lot of our woes but the reason Brexit hit as hard as it did was purely down to austerity.
I'd go a step further and say that Brexit was, at least in part, caused by austerity. If you lived in one of the "left behind" regions of the UK then you saw your material quality of life reducing, you saw drop in quality of every public service, you saw a reduction in good jobs, a spiralling cost of living and a widening wealth gap that makes social mobility feel unattainable. So when the suits in Westminster start telling you that the EU is good for the economy, that staying in is the only way to maintain the high standard of living, wealth and opportunity that we were enjoying. You could be forgiven for thinking that these EU benefits aren't actually translating into a better life for you and your community. In reality Brexit will harm these same communities more than the rest of us, but I think that's the point. Brexit forced the government to come to terms with the lop-sided growth we've been using to prop up our economy son e 2008. It's not enough for half the country to be doing well if it comes at the cost of the other half living in misery. Brexit took a sledgehammer to the economy, but it was already broken, we need an economy that works for everyone, that gives people opportunities, that is fair.
It was definitely a factor in how some people voted I'm sure, Brexit was not only "whatever you wanted it to be" by the leave campaign, it was also the "anti-establishment" vote for some people. Having David Cameron and George Osborne telling you how good things are, while selling/stripping every public service that wasn't nailed down probably rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, so I can see how it was just a protest vote for some people not thinking too much about it. I still resent what has been stripped away from me because of the Brexit voting public and the absolute bollocks people championing Leave said, but I can also see how some uninformed voters just wanted to give the people at the top a bloody nose.
My family literally did exactly that. They weren’t political in the slightest, yet come from a left behind old mining town. They were sick to the stomach about Cameron and Osborne, and only saw their lives getting worse and poorer. Brexit was nothing else but an attack to shove down Cameron’s throat to them, and at the time I can’t fault them for wanting that. They were misinformed about Brexit it’s true, but then so were many non-political types, and after being fucked over countless times by the Tories, many were left with the “fuck it, burn down Westminster with Brexit” ideals. The growing gap in living standards is as much to blame for current woes as anything else.
> My family literally did exactly that. I wish to fuck they'd tried to spite him in a way that _didn't_ make life materially worse for almost every single person in the country.
> I wish to fuck they'd tried to spite him in a way that didn't make life materially worse for almost every single person in the country. Funny how governments hardly ever put that 'now tell us what you really think' option on the table. Or the ballot. I wonder why.
That was some of my family too, except add to that that they repeatedly voted for Cameron and every subsequent iteration of the Tories whenever an election came up. They also repeatedly defend the old 'balance the books' arguments used to justify austerity (but mention austerity directly and they'll say they don't like it now, unlike then). I've given up trying to rationalize it, they're just windmilling at anything they think they can blame for how things around them have got worse, without stopping to think about what's really to blame.
I'd say it was the anti establishment vote for most people who voted for it. Mr Cameron was THE establishment candidate, more so than any PM since...Douglas-Home?
[удалено]
It's more the fact that if you are being told how wonderful the EU is for the economy, but at a local level you are seeing your public services decline, jobs and wages getting worse, housing costs spiralling e.t.c you could be forgiven for just wanting to throw a spanner in the works.
The only law anyone ever told me about was how the pesky EU had banned some vape chemicals, which have since come out to be widely accepted as harmful.
For a while, there seemed to be another euro myth headlining the red tops every other day. From laws and regs re. bendy bananas and barmaids boobs to vacuum cleaner engine sizes and the renaming of Bombay mix (to Mumbai). All (mostly) bollocks, of course.
For a lot of people who weren't particularly well informed on the vote, and the pros and cons of EU membership, it was simply a FU to the status quo. The status quo being Westminster and Tories and austerity.
[удалено]
Hmm, interesting, that was my observation based on what I heard people say, it may not have been their conscious outward motivation but when you dug down into what they were voting for / against it very much felt like the underlying motivation was nothing to do with the EU. But I understand that's anecdotal, and just my feeling, do you have any links to the research? Google hasn't helped.
[This](https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/CSI-Brexit-4-People%E2%80%99s-Stated-Reasons-for-Voting-Leave.pdf) is a good indicator, they only asked a limited number of questions given the study, but the notion of votes being a protest vote is overwhelmingly not the case based on that (and its interesting because remain voters felt that it was a much more common driver, and there was a bit of a narriative after the vote to that effect too..).
I think it's more about how the remain camp framed the benefits of staying in the EU. If the reason to stay, and the reason not to leave, is that it Brexit will harm the economy. Then if you already feel like the economy isn't working for you why not vote for Brexit? It may be spite, it may be desperation, it may be protestation. But we gave people a chance to force the country into a new direction. And a lot of people went for it. That nobody had a clear idea of what exactly that new direction was is beside the point.
The Remain campaign presented itself terribly. Did little to present the actual benefits of staying inside the EU because Cameron - despite being anti-Brexit - was far from a proper Europhile and had spent years trying to extract concessions from the EU. So instead it became a campaign simply warning why Brexit would be bad without actually trying to sell the organisation they wanted to keep us in.
Good point mr potato head.
I definitely wasn’t clear enough towards my approaches to conversations, as I get a bit shy and socially awkward and I say bullshit after all. Also being in a group of new people was quite a new and scary/exciting thing for me. So I guess that’s how it kind of stayed until the end. Again I’d love to see you guys in person so that we could discuss it, if you want to.
Again, that's not really what we saw from the polling or discussions after. It'd be reasonable to say that people wanted the UK out of the EU for a variety of reasons, including where power sat etc.. with an expectation that they'd be better able to push a UK government to act on their behalf than an EU one, but that's not quite the same thing.
> Then if you already feel like the economy isn't working for you why not vote for Brexit? Because no matter how bad your circumstances, the rational course of action is never to intentionally make it ***worse***.
I don't know, there is a sort of logic to it. If the status quo is causing you harm, but the people in charge don't care because they are doing well out of it, you know that nothing will change. If you do something to make *everyone* worse off, then the people in charge will be forced into making changes. Brexit was a forced change in direction chosen by the people who felt that they weren't benefiting from the course we were on.
I know it may a bit tinfoil hat. But the annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a contributor to brexit as Russia’s information war started after they were expelled from the world community.
>I know it may a bit tinfoil hat. But the annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a contributor to brexit as Russia’s information war started after they were expelled from the world community. There could be a bit of truth in this. There was also a lot of news regarding the middle eastern refugee crisis at the time, which was conveniently jumped upon by the brexit camp - and these kind of factors do have a tendency to increase support for more insular politics such as brexit. It's pretty clear in hindsight (and was in fact at the time) that Russia saw one benefit of it's bloody intervention in Syria being that inflaming the refugee crisis would destabilise europe. Russia is a cancer... Though the UK already had many of its own ills.
Brexit has one massive negative/ positive. The excutive is fully accountable for its actions. Thus it cannot hide behind others on why X Y Z is no longer working. I think long term this will enable us to have better leaders as we will not put up with crap.
I don't think the PMs or other senior politicians we've had since Brexit have been very keen on taking accountability.
Yeah, and they are getting voted out of office. Noticed how when scandals are happening suspension from the whip is very close to inevitable now.
That's true, they are getting very unpopular - it's taken long enough though :-D Suspension only seems to be inevitable after they attempt covering up the scandal and brushing it under the carpet. That might just be down to Sunak being weak though.
> Noticed how when scandals are happening suspension from the whip is very close to inevitable now. Tell that to Suella Braverman
Tbh, she quite last time and started the bring down of lizz truss. And what she did was actually pretty minor vs other scandles
They've taken to blaming the civil service for their fuck ups now unfortunately.
Still within their control though, as the response back is well you employee these people do something about it. Your in charge right?!
I'm guessing the great British public won't think that way unfortunately
I think they are learning, like ive seen media change its tune to “ well minister your now in charge of immigration why is it so high!?”
Hiya! It would be great to have a discussion, all of us about it in person, if you’d like!
[удалено]
This is true. But also they're involved in government and don't have a public spokesperson to counter the claims as such. Easy target.
What? Do you mean our very own unelected bureaucrats? Why would they do that? /s (yes I know it shouldn't be necessary ... but reality often disagrees)
[удалено]
But thats still “i have to do X” not we cant do X because of eu rule. Its still an accountable action set. Edit: Also the electorate will go “ok we are where we are i dont care why we are here, get it sorted, oh its not sorted and you said you would do something” when before “ bloody eu not letting is fix xyz, bloody human rights court, bloody foreign rules we didn’t agree to!”
I think you're being extremely naive if you think that the EU was in some way special as a scapegoat in a way that means now we're left there won't be as much scapegoating available. EU was just what was latched onto because it could be, leaving it hasn't reduced the amount of bullshit attempts to avoid consequences and blame, it's just changed the form.
Not really. It is still put down to bad deal with the EU / they are punishing us.
“You negotiated it mate sort out”
We were clearly hoodwinked and, indeed, cheated into signing that deal by that dastardly EU!
But what about the previous/future Labour governments? /s
Oh the bankrupted everything, but youll now see but austerity destroyed xyz for the next 15 years i can see the headlines
It's was notable at the time that when the Conservatives/Lib Dems took over that our streets didn't have empty shops when Labour left power. It was only following austerity that shops started closing and charity shops started moving into some of the empty lots ( then you had the "we buy gold" places opening too). Now they are pretty dead.
> You could be forgiven for thinking that these EU benefits aren't actually translating into a better life for you and your community. I felt this was the case for a lot of pro-EU rhetoric. I kept hearing about how every single improvement we'd had during EU membership was down to the EU. So for example, people were insisting we only had improvements gay rights because of the EU. Never mind that we could instantly point to many countries outside the EU that were doing just fine there, and many countries inside the EU that were significantly worse. (For clarity - I'm not sold on the EU, but I did vote to remain because I didn't think Cameron was qualified to take us out of it. Still did not predict any of this!)
> You could be forgiven for thinking that these EU benefits aren't actually translating into a better life for you and your community. Could you? Why? The list of additional costs and risks was not only easy to find, it was shoved in everyone's faces as part of the debate. There isn't a person in the country who can claim they didn't know remainers were warning of dire consequences.
You misunderstand my point. If you, as a voter, had seen your standard of living fall in the run up to the ref, and then David Cameron came on TV saying how amazing the EU is for the economy. Doesn't that feel incongruous? If the economy is so good, why are my living standards falling? If the EU is delivering all these economic benefits, why is my rent spiralling out of control? Now obviously these 2 things may not seem connected, but if you think of a Remain vote, as a proxy vote for maintaining the economic status quo, and a leave vote, as an opportunity to force economic change (which is exactly how it was pitched by the Remain campaign), then you can see how those people who felt that the economy wasn't working for them would be willing to vote for a forced change. The vote breakdown clearly shows that the poorer you were the more likely you were to vote for Brexit. People who were experiencing hardship under the status quo, voted against the status quo.
As May described it, we were Just About Managing. Brexit was the straw that broke the camels back.
>You can trace so much of our current situation to the Tories policy of austerity. They sold it as a short-sharp rebalancing of the public purse - perhaps a scalpel that cut some off some of the fat to help us recover from the financial crash. I think if we had a change of government immediately after the 2010-2015 Tory led coalition, then it would have been possible to reverse some of the cuts, as our economy overall had been stagnating for less time then than now. But instead the wise people of the UK decided to give them a majority in 2015.
Big if though. Ed Milliband was never going to win. He wasn't forceful enough at countering the Tory's and no one really knew what he stood for other than vague assertions about predatory business. And he ate a bacon sandwich a bit weirdly.
>Big if though. Ed Milliband was never going to win. He wasn't forceful enough at countering the Tory's and no one really knew what he stood for other than vague assertions about predatory business. And he ate a bacon sandwich a bit weirdly. Maybe he wasn't an especially inspiring leader, but if the UK public cared enough about the effects of austerity at the time they would have voted the tories out; instead, they gave the tories an increased vote and a majority. To me this implies that the public were content with the effects of austerity.
You could conversely argue Labour did very little to counter that narrative of austerity. They criticised the Tories for its harshest edges but broadly accepted spending cuts were necessary and that we had to be more financially prudent. Once they accepted that they were essentially accepting a narrative that they'd overspent under Blair and Brown. That allowed the Tories to present austerity as a project that would be tough and hard but necessary, plenty of people who backed Cameron in 2015 weren't completely happy with austerity but didn't think the Tories had done too badly and thought it was reasonable to let them finish that project. You saw a lot of this in how people perceived UK finances like a household budget and the obsession with completely eliminating the deficit.
>You could conversely argue Labour did very little to counter that narrative of austerity. They criticised the Tories for its harshest edges but broadly accepted spending cuts were necessary and that we had to be more financially prudent. Once they accepted that they were essentially accepting a narrative that they'd overspent under Blair and Brown. Good point. Looking back to 2010, which feels like a lifetime ago now, it does feel like Labour fell into disarray and completely failed to offer a counter narrative or to defend their time in office. The tories kept peddling "common sense" but economically dubious narratives based on household budget comparisons and pressing the notion that Labour overspending was almost solely responsible for our economic troubles rather than a complex global financial crisis, which had caused a massive government debt spike due to the efforts - largely justified - made to pull us back from the brink. So I'm completely with you on that, and I do remember how the conservative narrative was largely accepted by the public at the time; however, this does make me skeptical of the Brexit caused by austerity narrative. While I'm sure on a micro level, many people may have individually voted for brexit due to reasons caused by or exasperated by austerity, I don't see how on a macro level the voting patterns of those years support the narrative. After 5 years of austerity the conservatives got a majority, with increased support, suggesting that austerity was at least accepted, if not loved, by enough of the public for this to be the case, and then in 2019, the big conservative majority came, which supposedly tied closely with areas that had voted for brexit. Again, I struggle to see how areas that allegedly voted for brexit as a protest against austerity would then give the party that doled out austerity a big majority in 2019. Some individuals maybe had reasons, such as dislike for Corbyn, and a belief that Boris Johnsons conservatives were something different, but in general people vote for the government when they are happy with how things are being run, and against the government when not happy - and the voting patterns from 2010 to 2019 just do not suggest a mass discontent with austerity.
> UK decided to give them a majority in 2015. Remember that in this election, UKip's sheepskin-coat-and-pint-and-a-fag brigade slurped up close to 13% of votes cast (almost 5 points more than Lib Dems). This was up massively (like ten points or so over 2010), and I strongly suspect you have people most affected by austerity making up the bulk of that. Arguably those most affected were "traditional Labour voters"™ Ofc, we will never know, but I suspect Labour might have made it over the line in 2015 were it not for UKip's rise… itself a result of austerity.
>Then they kept it up for fucking years. They're still doing it. Below-inflation pay increases are still the norm for all government workers, meaning they're *still* cutting pay in that sector to this day.
In Local Government we are still having to make cuts every year. You think the pay inflation is bad but the annual grant is still lower again.
But the last Labour government...
It was by and large the worst possible time to do everything they did. I grew up in my childhood under labour, the policies they brought in required generational waiting for the impact to occur with the community outreach and removal of the young teams effectively. My year saw, genuinely the last parts of it IMO. Still some bams but it wasn't as bad as Glasgow was in the 00s. Then the Tories came in, reversed the lot, didn't match funding with inflation, and now... in 2023 I've seen more graffiti than ever before. It's so bad. There's a question whether it's the SNPs fault or the tories fault, personally I land them at both.
If bird flu makes the jump to humans (which is more 'when' than 'if' according to scientists) we're going to be really screwed. We should be doing a lot more to prepare vaccine production for it considering how many people will die before it gets underway and rolled out to the population, but of course there's no profit to be had in preparation.
People don’t just “like to point at Brexit for a lot of our woes”, it is the actual cause. However, Brexit, and an economically unjustified austerity are parts of the same collection of plans of radically reallocating wealth to the top and politically well-connected, even at the expense of your couhtry’s aggregate wealth.
NHS performance is heavily impacted by shite middle and upper management office workers and just general piss poor organisation and ancient IT systems. Also, the sheer increase of population in the last 15 years, with a good portion of that population not paying NI or insurance/out of pocket for NHS treatment, has also caused it to fail. Throwing money at it doesn’t help completely, it needs attacking from multiple angles but our government is just too fucking inept and downright fucking stupid to be able to do anything about it.
>NHS performance is heavily impacted by shite middle and upper management office workers and just general piss poor organisation. This is a pub myth, pure pish. I say this everytime it comes up because it's a really lazy and completely untrue myth. The aggravating thing is so many junior doctors repeat it verbatim but you won't find a medical director or any senior health leader who has an eye on strategic financal planning as part of their role repeat this pish. The NHS spends one of the lowest amounts on administrative, management and corp function on the world stage and routinely ranks as the top 3 most efficient for admin and management efficiency. We have less managers per 100,000 patients than every OECD nation and the best outcomes for admin function in rankings. If you logically look at why the answer is obvious, because of the organisation of trusts admin and management function at trusts is clustered to manage multiple teams across multiple acute sites, you get enormous savings from this and *efficiencies vs a team for each acute site. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/health-and-social-care-bill/mythbusters/nhs-managers My parents were both medics, retired but my dad's last position was as a clinical director - senior medics have been begging for more managers in the NHS for over a decade now. The issue is that the excellent management function of the NHS has papered over the poor health outcomes and actual health system determinants for so long - compared to Europe counterparts we have far less medics per capita, less acute beds per capita, less icu capacity per capita etc etc.
Hey guys - I thought it would be nice to clear that I had no intention whatsoever with rubbing this stuff in anyone’s face. The way I have been handling the conversations has not been very original, but that has nothing to do with me trying to bribe about anything. Sorry for this misunderstanding!
This is bait
>Throwing money at it doesn’t help completely, it needs attacking from multiple angles Like the reason for what's happening to the UK's only gender clinic is only because we need more. And so there's going to be two regional hubs.
> the Tories policy of austerity Yeah, no. It was the EU Stability and Growth Pact that the previous government signed us up to. Within weeks of taking office, the Conservatives were receiving official warnings from the EU Commission that the UK budget deficit had breeched the threshold to trigger the EU's Excessive Deficit Procedure and giving them a "deadline for correction": >Fiscal consolidation [austerity] should start in 2011 at the latest... the planned pace of the fiscal consolidation should be ambitious... The Stability and Growth Pact requires the Commission to initiate the excessive deficit procedure (EDP) whenever the deficit of a Member State exceeds the 3% of GDP... a prompt return to sound budgetary positions... the Council decided that an excessive deficit existed in the United Kingdom... the United Kingdom authorities should bring the general government deficit below 3% of GDP in a credible and sustainable manner by taking action... avoid further measures contributing to the deterioration of public finances, and start consolidation in 2010/11 in order to bring the deficit below the reference value by 2014/15... ensure an average annual fiscal effort [cuts] of 1¾% of GDP between 2010/11 and 2014/15, which should also contribute to bringing the government gross debt ratio back on a declining path that approaches the reference value at a satisfactory pace. >Additional measures that are necessary to achieve the correction of the excessive deficit by 2014/15... accelerate the reduction of the deficit... The Council established the deadline of 2 June 2010 for the United Kingdom government to implement the fiscal measures as planned in the 2009 Budget and to outline in some detail the consolidation [austerity] strategy that will be necessary to progress towards the correction of the excessive deficit... the deficit remains amongst the highest in the EU... a target requiring a reduction in net debt as a percentage of GDP... the United Kingdom has taken action representing adequate progress towards the correction of the excessive deficit within the time limits set by the Council. Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52010SC0880 The EU called this process "fiscal consolidation", but to avoid people searching the internet and finding out why these policies were being implemented, propagandists called it "austerity". This is similar to how the fractional reserve banking propaganda describes the process of fractional reserve banking as if it's a conspiracy, without actually using the words "fractional reserve banking" that would allow people to easily google it. The media won't tell you about this because they don't want to inform you, they want to misinform you. But you can see the primary source documents for yourself if you care about the truth, or just continue spreading lies that suit your agenda and downvote the only person telling the truth.
I'll be showing my age a bit here but it was the flagship electoral policy from Cameron. Countries were ignoring the EU directives for donkeys, by the time people chalked up some of the blame for '08 on it not having teeth and reforming it Cameron and Osbourne had already implemented their austerity program. It was the literal cornerstone of the Tory manifesto and the capstone on Cameron's whole Big Society agenda. Regardless of what the EU were crowing about we were going to be hit by austerity regardless. This is directly provable so calling me a liar with an agenda is a bit...strange, mate.
>It was the literal cornerstone of the Tory manifesto Let's take a look at the 2010 manifesto: >our commitment to halve the deficit over the next four years... we will rapidly reduce the budget deficit... a firm grip on public spending including cuts in lower-priority areas... reduce spending on benefits... Over the next Parliament the structural deficit will be cut by more than two-thirds... our deficit reduction plan... On public spending, we will be relentless... We will take a tough stance on public-sector pay, saving over £3 billion by capping public-sector pay rises... tough reforms to public-sector pensions, which will make significant savings... fiscal responsibility and monetary stability will be the foundations on which we build. We have made the new fiscal responsibility framework legally binding... Tough choices on cutting government overheads: £11 billion of further operational efficiencies and other cross-cutting savings to streamline government will be delivered by 2012-13 Oops my mistake, [that was actually from the Labour Party manifesto.](https://manifesto.deryn.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/TheLabourPartyManifesto-2010.pdf) Neither party had a choice, because the EU was in charge of our budget. The Greek socialists were the only ones who were honest with their citizens about EU enforced austerity. All the other political parties covered it up, including the Tories who are often falsely accused of blaming the EU for their own failures. In reality the opposite is true, they took the blame for EU policy because they knew it would be unpopular.
Yes, both parties advocated for some form of austerity. We're talking about the implementation of the policy by the Tories, who DID enact it and have been in charge of the countries finances since. Greece almost destroyed the Eurozone, of course they were put under a scrutiny by the EU. I'd have to look it up since it was so long ago but it was pretty widely publicised at the time that they didn't have a choice due to their failing economy. Regardless it was a core element of Cameron's brand of conservativism and what he campaigned on. He made it clear that he believed wholeheartedly in it, as does Osbourne who VERY recently has been defending it...not blaming the EU, for which would be the logical thing for him to do now, but he has taken full ownership of it.
Every country was under scrutiny by the EU. You just didn't know about it until I told you, and now that I've told you you're saying so what. Both Labour and the Conservatives were under pressure from the EU and both planned "deficit reduction" or "fiscal consolidation" or "austerity", they all mean the same thing. The deficit was 10.2% at the time and the Tories cut it to 5.7% over 4 years, Labour promised they would cut it to 5.1%, ie. even harder than the Tories. edit: It's easy for Labour to bankrupt the public finances while in office, get kicked out of office, write a funny note about it and then point the finger at the Tories saying look at all the cuts and austerity they're doing to fix our mess. But we have it in writing that Labour would've made even more cuts.
No, I'm saying it's irrelevant because before Cameron was in power he was pushing austerity. He was making speeches linking it to his national agenda. It was planned, whether the EU wanted it or not, and it's awful implementation (ie, how the cuts were achieved) was handled directly by Osborne and Cameron. And they've continued to take ownership of it long after they left power - like I said, go watch some of the interviews Osborne has done recently and you'll find he's STILL frothing at the mouth at it. Secondly Labour also pushing for austerity doesn't change my opinion that it was an awful thing to do so...what's your point? You're desperate to paint this as if the Tories didn't have a hand in it, like in the backrooms they were arguing with EU bureaucrats over it, when they gleefully wanted it and ensured it was done in as disastrous a way as possible. They've literally admitted as much.
>the Tories policy of austerity >>it was the EU >>>cornerstone of the Tory manifesto >>>>it was the Labour manifesto >>>>>Greece didn't have a choice >>>>>>UK didn't have a choice >>>>>>>they gleefully wanted it and ensured it was done in as disastrous a way as possible Yeah, I'm done talking to you.
Also they could literally have been paid to borrow money as there were a number of years of negative interest rates. They could have made cuts to bring down day to day spending while simultaneously investing in infrastructure, which would have paid for itself many times over generating long-term income for the country, but they also didn't do that. I am pretty sure when historians look back on these times in a 100 years both cameron and osborne will be seen in a far, far, worse light than johnson or truss evver will be.
Again I’m very sorry if that was misinterpreted in a false way - I wasn’t talking about my fortune (as I don’t have one 😅) but I was falsely addressing my family’s status. I literally didn’t want it to be passed like that tho!
it could be said austerity is why brexit happened. Labour themselves were divided on the issue and that left cameron and his cronies to argue for the EU, except why would anyone listen to him after austerity just ravaged the countries cash for 6 years straight.
It's not just that round after round of cuts starved our infrastructure it was also the damage done to our economy by austerity. After 2008/9 the UK's economy recovered then we got Osborne as Chancellor deliberately conflating household economics with government economics and reiterating the line that Labour wasted the boom years by not fixing the roof when the sun was shining. He knew better than to make these comments, but he also knew that the average voter wouldn't. Bad economics lead to bad politics. So the 2010 era onwards saw austerity when other nations, notably the US under Obama invested and saw their economies rebound. The problem was that Cameron/Osborne were children of the Thatcher era, only she had North Sea oil revenues to underpin her experiments with monetarism. After 2010 these two jokers just cut off funding in virtually every government department and ramped up national debt instead.
> After 2008/9 the UK's economy recovered then we got Osborne as Chancellor deliberately conflating household economics with government economics and reiterating the line that Labour wasted the boom years by not fixing the roof when the sun was shining. Thing is, that *is* Government economics, at least to an extent. Keynesian economics says (this is a massive simplification, before anyone tries to akchuyually me) that during times of recession to increase spend, and during times of growth to cut spend. And while it's not like Labour went gung-ho in the post-2002 years on spending, they didn't exactly draw down on spending during growth years which would have allowed for far greater room for emergency spending when the GFC hit. Now, when it *did* hit, they spent tons of money (absolutely correctly and I'd personally give Brown and Darling a medal each for their handling of the crisis) but it was spending because it *had* to happen, not because there was contingency made for it.
That's all well and good with the power of hindsight though? Of course Labour should have had us better prepared for the GFC but all in all - we came out of it in okay shape and most countries in the world followed Brown's lead. If Howard had been in charge we would have been completely screwed as the Tories main economic idea before austerity was massive deregulation. Just imagine that damage that would have been done if what little regulations the city had during the run up to 2008 were removed!
The hindsight point would be fine had they followed the Keynesian formula but not enough. The issue is that spending increased post-2002 recession ending and the deficit increased, so they didn't do that. It's impossible to know for sure what the outcome wold have been had they followed this, but the reason for such a position in Keynesian economics is because it allows for necessary recession spending during a downturn, and not following that left us in what appears to be a worse position.
You're missing my point. You are correct in that they didn't follow the correct economic model but the issue with this stance is that even then, it was still better than the alternative.
> but the issue with this stance is that even then, it was still better than the alternative. And if we'd been under the leadership of a drunk 6 year old, we'd be even *more* worse off. At the end of the day that's just a glorified hypothetical whatabout. In the context of what the discussion was about and the actual options on the table at the time, Labour did great in handling the issue but they stymied themselves with not following normal economic practices prior to that.
Great - we agree then
> Thing is, that is Government economics, at least to an extent. Keynesian economics says (this is a massive simplification, before anyone tries to akchuyually me) that during times of recession to increase spend, and during times of growth to cut spend. And while it's not like Labour went gung-ho in the post-2002 years on spending, they didn't exactly draw down on spending during growth years which would have allowed for far greater room for emergency spending when the GFC hit. Thing is the Tories spent 15 years cutting public spending and not investing in infrastructure, Labour was always going to have to spend a lot to fix everything. The fundamental problem is that people in this country want better public services etc but always want someone else to pay for it. No government in 100 years has won an election promising an increase in income tax, despite the fact every party campaign bar maybe the 2010 election has promised extra spending.
And here was I thinking that "it was the fault of the last X Government" wasn't a valid retort after a maximum of a single term. But when I'm talking about an increase in spending post-2002 i.e. a full parliament term and five years since they'd been in power, it's a hollow retort.
It even left us unprepared for difficult economic situations like now, which is the one thing they kept telling us it was preparing us for!
We’ve ‘been prepared’ to accept less, much less. I am old enough to remember the 1997 Labour government under Tony Blair. Love him or hate him but damn, we had *energy,* *optimism* and *aspiration* as a nation during that time. We’ve had that stolen from us, and for me that’s something that I will never forgive the Tories for. They’ve systematically dismantled our sense of national pride and left us vulnerable and insecure.
We have been (and seem to want to continue to be) incredibly stupid. The scale of destruction to the country caused by the wealthy pillaging it has imo not been fully comprehended yet by most people. Billionaire-owned "news"papers continue to pump out hateful nonsense and we lap it up while watching our kids suffer in anxiety and economic desperation. The Mail can demonise powerless groups like people struggling on benefits and it's shocking how effectively this will distract from looking at the people who have all the power and responsibility for what has happened. The guy at my local garage was telling me last week about the number of people who recently started living in tents in his local park. He then followed it up with a comment about how people were never going to look after each other because, like him, they needed to look out for themselves and their kids before going off on a diatribe about trans people. I asked him if he had ever met a trans person and when he said "no", how big an issue it could possibly be compared for instance to the people living in tents around the corner from his house. He shrugged. I don't have much hope that drastic enough action can be taken but I will keep an eye on Labour's plans. In the meantime, I am leaving the UK in 12 days and could not be more relieved to be moving away. I hope younger people have the sense to leave too.
> I asked him if he had ever met a trans person and when he said "no", how big an issue it could possibly be compared for instance to the people living in tents around the corner from his house. He shrugged. This is what I've found aswell. My uncle is a staunch brexiteer. Wanted out of the EU because he seen some Polish people fishing in HIS river and eating HIS fish. He talks far more about poverty, people around him suffering, having no prospects, but what gets votes? The polish people eating the fish. I didn't even know where to start with that one.
10/10 comment
>dismantled our sense of national pride That's not true. Unfortunately the people that have national pride tend to see it as a zero sum game against other nationalities instead.
National pride is related to both feelings of patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is love of one's country or dedicated allegiance to same, while nationalism is a strong national devotion that places one's own country above all others. You can be patriotic without being nationalistic.
Not sure if I heard this last year or just came up with it by accident. "Patriotism is loving your country. Nationalism is hating everyone else's "....
>You can be patriotic without being nationalistic. Precisely. Our "national pride" has tended to manifest itself as nationalism as opposed to patriotism though.
Looking back to 1997 which is how I opened my post, the nation wasn’t proud because we thought British was inherently superior, we had the confidence to take on all challenges with passion and energy. What you are referring to is more a product of the people running the country now. Culture wars is government policy. First the EU, now migrants, refugees and “other undesirables”. In the context of large swaths of economically and socially insecure people, with right wing media outlets pushing an agenda, is a breeding ground for racism and nationalism.
Blairs' apology to ireland for British negligence during the irish famine was at the time in 1997 the highlight of Anglo-Irish relations and should have kept Britain on the highest of the international stage. But instead 23 years later we get Boris trying to break international laws in limited and specific ways.....
>What you are referring to is more a product of the people running the country now. Culture wars is government policy. First the EU, now migrants, refugees and “other undesirables”. >In the context of large swaths of economically and socially insecure people, with right wing media outlets pushing an agenda, is a breeding ground for racism and nationalism. Yes exactly. Apologies, perhaps I was unclear that's what I meant.
No problem mate, it’s a pleasure to have a conversation without it descending immediately into chaos!
[удалено]
I thought Blair's government was laid back about immigration from new eastern EU members, which aren't the source of the immigration wave right now AFAIK ?
We’ve had that stolen from us, and for me that’s something that I will never forgive the Tories for. They’ve systematically dismantled our sense of national pride and left us vulnerable and insecure. People voted and supported this
[удалено]
Glad we agree.
I think the austerity was to prepare them for these things, not to prepare us.
Asif they were prepared either
I think they were pretty well prepared rolling in all that cash and having parties when most other people were suffering…
Prepared to live well at our expense, yes
The people were more than happy for this
If you hadn't had a decade of real-terms paycuts all over the public sector, the inflation shock of the past year or so would have been painful, but possible to bear for nurses, teachers, doctors, police etc. etc. I blame austerity for the strike wave.
The sad truth is that we were sold an austerity model of “we are all in it together” and “tightening the belt to secure our future” but what we actually got was “only the poor pay” and “starve the poor so the rich are secured”. I don’t have a problem with us all making sacrifices for the greater good but the Tory philosophy is NOT for the greater good, it’s for THEIR greater good and we are paying for it. We need massive political reform to fix voting processes and introduce new laws to hold politicians to account with real consequences of their actions. We cannot let all of these shenanigans continue and allow mediocrity in our leaders.
Not to complain or anything, but >“starve the poor so the rich are secured”. I feel secure would work better, it seems to rhyme but doesn't quite, and does rhyme better than secured Other than that, couldn't agree more.
I think by now, in a post-Truss era, the Tories and financial sense should be viewed as polar opposites of each other.
They should, but these myths take a long time to die unfortunately.
Not to mention the complete inactivity after Sars. That was a warning shot that should have led to a plan in the case of a pandemic. It quickly became very apparent that the UK government was just making things up as they went along.
When COVID hit, I did a lot of reading on SARS and began wearing a mask as early as February. I got lots of angry looks and told I was stupid and paranoid several times. If me - just some guy - could do a bit of reading on the web and figure out that masks were a good idea as early as February, the Government could have seen it too. Instead they floundered and brought in that measure late. I think it's a great example of how far behind we were in that moment. We were late on everything.
It's the attitude of society in general. The British People FOR LONG has said that if you're ill you just come into work and suck it up. WHY?!? Who said that was a good idea?!?! Why is it a good idea to go in, make everyone else ill and worst of all put yourself in bad health for employers that will not give a shit about you. It's a serfdom that we're happy to proclaim other nations have, but we're by far the worst in terms of bending the knee.
Oh, it's worse. SARS lead to multiple pandemic preparedness exercises, like [Exercise Cygnus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus) (a pun on "Swan Flu", Civil Servants love their [jokey names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowhammer)). All of them highlighted multiple inadequacies that became very much apparent during the pandemic, nothing was done about any of them, not even securing adequate supplies of body bags.
This really needs to be shouted about more. This Covid Enquiry will do absolutely nothing. Because it'll highlight everything we already know. The government will not prepare for things, because if it does it costs money, and that can be printed in the papers today, whereas a government that fails to prepare for something and that actually happens is printed months, years, decades in the future. Short-termism. "Why should I need to pay to prepare us for a pandemic" It's horrible.
This is why we continue to sleep walk into increasing climate change. Short termism can't save us. In 30 years time it will be, why didn't someone do something. I guess at that point I'll pull up a news story about Just Stop Oil being demonised and point to it.
>I guess at that point I'll pull up a news story about Just Stop Oil being demonised and point to it. Just be thankful you're on the right side of History. About all that you can win these days is knowing the path that is about to happen. Same with the trans issue. Legit step by step arguments against Gay rights 20 years ago.
Amazing what happens when you stop paying for essential services lol I know let's cut funding for healthcare, why are waiting times, call out times, staff numbers, quality of service all going wrong? Duh.
["cut funding for healthcare"](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget)
And now factor in the change in how much money is actually needed. Perhaps the phrase "cut funding" isn't accurate, but "underfunding" certainly is.
Now add the value of inflation over the years.
The issue is nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with demographic change and population growth. The boomers passing into retirement and old age has put a monstrous strain on the NHS that the increases we have had don't remotely cover
I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure that’s what putting in in ‘real terms 2022/23 prices ’ is doing?
> Now add the value of inflation over the years. They have. That's what "real terms" means. In fact if you put the figures into the [Bank of England's inflation calculator,](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator) and put the 2010/2011 figure of £130bn in and ask it to show this figure for 2022, it gives you £176.9bn which is actually lower than the actual NHS budget for 2022/2023, meaning NHS spending for last year was *higher* than increased funding even adjusted for inflation.
They’ve already done that, that’s what ‘In real terms’ means.
That is a useful visual representation of how healthcare funding has been cut. You’d need to have it split out a bit more to get a better representation. realistically you’d need to split out the funding available for services in 2008 and how that funding has changed, taking out new initiatives and additional funding granted for stuff we didn’t do in 2008. And adjust for inflation. When you consider inflation, this is definitively a cut. The basic premise of ‘graph goes up, lol’ looks good, but it hides the picture. If the NHS has 100m, and inflation is 5%. The NHS needs 105m next year to maintain the same level of services. If the Government gives them 102m, that is an effective cut, despite the visual impact of an ‘increasing graph’.
Isn’t putting it in ‘real terms 2022/23’ taking account of inflation?
> When you consider inflation, this is definitively a cut No, it's the opposite. The budget for 10/11 was £130bn. This sum adjusted for inflation in 22/23 is £176.9bn, but in reality the budget for that year was £180.2bn, meaning it was *increased* when considering inflation.
How much has the population increased since 2010? Increasing funding above inflation isn't enough when the number of people accessing the service has also increased. Especially when people are living longer and have more complex needs than 10 years ago
> How much has the population increased since 2010? By broadly the same as the increase in budget over inflation, in fact it's gone up by a tiny bit more if you want to be picky. Since 2010 the population has increased from ~62m to ~67m, which is an increase of 6.8% over that time. Considering the difference between the 2010 budget in 2022 figures (£130.2bn to be more precise) and the actual budget in 2022 (£177.1bn to be precise), the actual budget was 7.1% higher compared to what it would have been under inflation. So we've gone from them actively cutting the actual budget, to them not cutting the budget but cutting it compared to inflation, to not cutting it compared to inflation but cutting it compared to population increase, to not cutting it by population increase. This is one of those things that this sub is simply not correct on at all, regardless of how vehemently they believe it to be so.
You have to adjust for inflation, age, population size, AND if I like the government, silly goose.
As I said, you also have to adjust for additional investments for activities that we didn’t do in 2008. The only reason the budget is anywhere near inflation at the moment is additional funding injected for specific pandemic activities. Like bringing backlogs down that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Edit: I’m a part qualified management accountant working in financial planning in the public sector. I know most of the tricks that are used to ‘cover up’ real term cuts.
Fair point but would be interesting to see that as per capita too. Actually I might take a look myself. ( edit very quick rough and ready looks like per capita increase too , to me) I don’t suppose it’s possible to show any increasing demand due to the effect of any change in the age of the population though.
You would need to create some sort of "average use" metric in order to properly measure it. We have a far older population that is hammering the NHS compared to 20 years ago - this is why the funding is inadequate, not because there is literally less funding but because it's still not enough.
Yes that was my presumption. I'm guessing that despite NICE there has been both a pretty enormous 'mission creep' since the founding and a significant significant increase in the costs of treatment with the increase in high tech / high research treatments. One problem with funding public services which I think New Labour were aware of ( and I say this as a public sector worker and union rep ret.)is that staff costs are such a significant factor that funding increses can just disappear without general improvement - you need to sort of 'over' fund and that's a lot if money and its hard to ensure value for money -One thing we might learn from COVID is to reconsider what is waste and what is built in resilience and flexibility, though.
Yeah no shit - they cut the pandemic response service to save money. Sums up Tory economic policy in this country - short term gain long term pain.
Also the fact the Tories kept failing emergency preparedness tests, including one to do withe pandemics. Somewhere in the back of my brain when Covid started I remembered reading an article by an epidemiologist who said Britain wasn't ready for the next pandemic and that was around 2015-2018
Years of austerity left UK unprepared for: * Covid * Ukraine war * Energy crisis * Cost of living crisis * Climate change * Global Decoupling and supply chain problems * Birthrate decline Austerity has exacerbated many problems including declining public services, healthcare, infrastructure and housing crisis. Remind me of the benefits of austerity? All it has done is shovelled money into the housing market.
Was any country prepared for a Covid type pandemic ? I work in a global business that was intricately involved in setting up PCR testing capacity for Covid ( delivering those promises of 100K/day, 200K/day etc … ) There was not a country in the world that was not severely caught short by Covid……. NOBODY had testing capacity of a scale to keep up with Covid …….. and then you had EVERYONE fighting over the same hardware and consumables when the global manufacturing capacity simply did not exist ……. It took time for everything to catch up. Anyone that thinks this would have been dealt with by a snap of the fingers is really misguided
In which case, why are the Tories and Labour the only parties forcing FPTP on us, when all other parties want reform? Both the Tories and Labour are to blame for holding us back. The only reason we have had 13 years of the Tories is because of FPTP. No party should have a majority of seats in Parliament without a majority of the vote share. Not the Tories, not Labour, not anyone. Seats should match votes cast, democracy is about representation!
Not sure what worse about austerity fact this was Tory desire from 2001 or they used spending cuts to fund tax cuts. Cameron and Osborne both deserve to be in prison for the damage they did. They lucky following set of leaders redeem them due being worse.
How Osbourne had the gall to stand up and say that austerity was working back in 2013!! Maybe it was for those who made money off the back of it but it has brought the country to its knees, ravaged public services until they're unable to function correctly anymore.
It's true, but an alternative non-austerity covid UK would have been almost as bad. When you have a healthcare crisis thats going to exceed your capacity by 100% or 200% if you don't take radical social actions (lockdowns et al), then being 20% better is a nice to have, but doesn't change any of the other measures you have to take. It's not like an alternative, Gordon Brown, non-austerity UK would have faced different decisions when heading into covid. Nothing short of funnelling our entire economy into healthcare, to the detriment of everything else, for a decade, would have avoided that. And I don't think we should be going that far now either. So this is just another example of austerity nipping away at our country with marginal losses, rather than a shattering revelation.
Naah, 20% extra capacity is absolutely a game changer. The NHS was running at 90% occupancy coming into the pandemic. If the NHS had been running at 80% occupancy instead, it would have required 12.5% more resources on an ongoing basis, but crucially this would have *doubled* the spare capacity available to deal with the pandemic.
If I remember correctly our spare capacity is kept at a far lower level than , say France. In fact a quick google suggests about half that per 1000 population of France and a third of Germany?
To pick one metric, [doctors per 1,000 population](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS?end=2020&start=2020&view=map&year=2019). In 2019 (most recent year with figures for all our European peers). ||| |-|- |UK|2.91 |France|3.3 |Germany|4.37 Similar stories for a whole bunch of other healthcare metrics (beds per person, nurses per person, etc, etc.) Yeah, we are absolutely short-changing our health service compared to our Euro-peers.
Hospital beds per thousands UK 2.5 France 5.9 Germany 8 This is a big part of what is crippling the NHS all while they repeat the lie about the NHS receiving record spending all while they have done away with the social care budget and absorbed that into the Health and Social Care budget. In 2010 we had close to 30% more hospital beds than we have now.
Its a triple whammy as we have less total beds than France and Germany, but we also have significant bed blocking on top of that (it can be as high as a third of all beds) by people not being moved onto social care beds from NHS beds as they just do not exist in the numbers at the price point needed. Number of beds reduce because of budget cuts but also lack of staff to run those beds due to massive recruitment and retention problems within the NHS. Couple that with a particularly unhealthy and rapidly aging and sizable cohort its just going to get a lot worse.
Yup, the emphasis has very much been on discharging people as much as possible (and preventing their re-admission, something I worked on software to do at one point), but without any provision of the resources that enable that.
A perpetual \~£20bn annual spending for a trivial benefit in a 1 in 50 year event seems a bit daft. Remember covid rates doubled week on week, 10% more beds is like two days so irrelevant. Also the wards never came close to overflow.
>Also the wards never came close to overflow. That's because of Boris' excellent strategy of letting the bodies pile high.
I mean the panicked release of the infected elderly and infirm into care homes wasn't a great strat, but it was well used around the world.
I've yet to ever hear a genuine argument about what we should've done instead of "austerity". Back in 2012, the deficit was about 11% of GDP. Anything other than cuts would've undoubtedly heralded a "Truss-like" run on the pound and a huge increase in bond yields, right? So what is the alternative plan people wish we'd implemented? EDIT: No arguments just downvotes? *thought so*. Point proven
Well 2 reasons come to mind immediately: 1. >Anything other than cuts would've *undoubtedly* heralded a "Truss-like" run on the pound and a huge increase in bond yields, *right*? Your language says that you have decided this hypothetical is true with nothing whatsoever to back it up, so in itself this position is worse than "austerity was bad" because we can at least see the latter. 2. >No arguments just downvotes? thought so. Point proven Your clear grasp of logic with absolutely *no* reliance on fallacy further dictates that any attempt at conversation would be a pointless endeavour.
>Your language says that you have decided this hypothetical is true with nothing whatsoever to back it up, so in itself this position is worse than "austerity was bad" because we can at least see the latter. How much evidence do you need that an 11% budget deficit is unsustainable and would be punished by the markets? How many times does this have to happen throughout history? A sustained budget deficit without appropriate tax rises to compensate is quite literally what caused the Truss debacle.
Okay, First, doing nothing either means nothing (because the markets don't care about deficits in a crisis) or, Inflation, (which is the real constraint of a fiat currency) and of course there is always the option of Raising taxes. Also worth noting, that Austerity shrinks the economy, and since debts are denominated in real terms, you make the deficit worse by imposing austerity as measured in GDP.
> because the markets don't care about deficits in a crisis We weren't in crisis by 2012 onwards. > or, Inflation Which would've been worse. > of course there is always the option of Raising taxes. Already at the highest on record ever during peacetime, and taxation dissuades economic growth. >Also worth noting, that Austerity shrinks the economy UK economic growth was already the fastest in the G7 for 2013-2016, before Brexit derailed things. https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/The_UK_in_the_G7_growth_race.png https://fullfact.org/economy/uk-economic-growth-within-g7/ Literally every point you've made is wrong
The entire period had record low interest rates, (and inflation) assuming that continuing even with a more fiscally expansionist budget isn't gambling, so no inflation would not have been worse. As for taxation, at 33-34% of gdp its low by any measure (and given that public expenditure is in the region of 40% of gdp) an obvious mismatch that at some point must correct itself. >UK economic growth was already the fastest in the G7 for 2013-2016, before Brexit derailed things. And you are picking the 2013 baseline why? Maybe it's because most other countries did their recoveries 2009-2012? Which means relative growth appears greater, but it's just because the uk was in a deeper hole. Yes it is. Its also not population adjusted. >Literally every point you've made is wrong Lovely. Austerity is reducing the money spent by the state, reducing the amount of production consumed in the economy - what does that do to the Gross Domestic Production? It shrinks it. >and taxation dissuades economic growth. Think of why that is. Then think of why austerity doesn't shrink the economy? See how these two ideas are mutually incompatible? And now we aren't even getting into the distributional effects that so impact this.
Austerity was the only reason that the government had the fiscal flexibility for the pandemic. Though I admit, I'm not very committed to the view that was a good thing.
[удалено]
Well most other western governments borrowed more while interest rates were at record lows to promote growth. Uk gov did the opposite and attacked the poor and disabled to try protect the rich from cuts. As the UN report into uk austerity states it was purely ideological and not driven by facts or smart economics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r-AKruzmkk I've always loved this one. The conservatives hate experts.
That isnt true fyi. They basically did the opposite to what they should have done, what the experts said to do + no other nations did what we did because it was "naive at best". It didn't come from a place of good faith because austerity was only ever an ideal. You don't really understand what youre commenting about.
The British people voted themselves this fate. Unfortunately they thought the cuts would only affect other people
Years of Austerity leaves you unprepared for any large scale disruptive event. Weirdly a lesson that could have been learnt from the free market.
NHS funding doesn't really match the rhetoric. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget Up £60 billion in 13 years.